...5th grader had brought a piece of steak for her lunch, and had brought a steak knife..."She did not use it inappropriately. She did not threaten anyone with it. She didn't pull it out and brandish it. Nothing of that nature," explained Marion County School Spokesman Kevin Christian, who added that it made no difference what the knife was being used for, they had no choice but to call police.

No choice? No choice? ... you always have a choice, always. The things is if you make the right choice or not. I swear this country is out of control! Could they have not called the parents and said 'Please do not allow your child to bring steak knives to school. We have taken the steak knife from her, please come pick it up.' Common sense is nearly dead in this country (USA) and what little that is left is on life support.No wonder over half the country is medicated, crap like this makes your head hurt. Maybe I need to get meds too and then I'll understand this kind of stupid stuff.

There was one time, when I was in SC where a grade schooler got expelled because he brought a butter knife to school to cut his banana (he was wearing braces). I understand zero tolerance, but it shouldn't mean zero common sense.

The first is pure laziness. If you can refer to a policy, you don't have to listen, think or exercise judgement. This is what we do in this situation, regardless of the individual circumstances.

The other problem is the litigiousness of our society. Liability is the bogie man of all corporate and government organizations. If we have a policy to deal with this, we cover our asses. And if we mindlessly apply that policy, we cover our asses. Making a decision means taking responsibility, and who wants to do that? Better to call the cops on a little girl who was just eating her lunch.

Of course, police departments suffer from the same problems these days, which is demonstrated by the fact that they actually responded to this "incident" and didn't suggest that the school stop wasting their time when there are real crimes going on.

Policies are set for reasons but it's when it's abused or taken literally then there lies the problem.

Let's look at an example. No pets in the store are allowed. Now almost all places I know the exception is that seeing eye dogs are allowed. If it did not say that seeing eye dogs are allowed, if a blind person would go into a store they would be asked to leave because of this.

I think calling the police in this sitution was a little extreme. I mean she wasn't swinging the knife at any one.

It's funny to old coots like me who routinely carried a pocket knife to elementary school as a youth.

I'm glad I live in the backwoods south, the kids here still carry them and so fair no ones got stuck. I saw a teacher today at the barber shop and I asked him if that would happen here, and he laughed and said 'if it did no one would be at school, all the boys and half the girls carry them. The only thing we worry about is arguments over which is a better pocket knife, Old Timer or Case, Dodge or Ford, John Deere or IH."

It's funny to old coots like me who routinely carried a pocket knife to elementary school as a youth.

I'm glad I live in the backwoods south, the kids here still carry them and so fair no ones got stuck. I saw a teacher today at the barber shop and I asked him if that would happen here, and he laughed and said 'if it did no one would be at school, all the boys and half the girls carry them. The only thing we worry about is arguments over which is a better pocket knife, Old Timer or Case, Dodge or Ford, John Deere or IH."

So I said that's easy ... Case, Dodge and John Deere.

I was the same way, always had a cheap but useful Barlow or sometimes the Buck pocketknife in my pocket.

The thing is, this will not change until the community starts holding the schools to task for dumb mistakes. Them or the school boards and mayors.

I always carried my Swiss Army knife. And before Sept. 11, I'd carry it and my Leatherman on the plane. The only question I got was whether the Leatherman was a pager or not. Trying to hijack a jet with either or both of those knifes is sort of like the Orphans threatening the Warriors with a straight razor; a pathetic joke.

Boy, Andy, you nailed this one right on the head. Policy = "I Don't Have To Think." When I was in Law Enforcement, I wrote my share of policies. In some cases, I KNEW I was merely documenting "a way" (as opposed to a GOOD way) to do something so I would have something to point out to keep the defense attorneys off my back in court.

"Why do you do it THAT way.""That's are policy."

Hehe. The questions would stop right there. It was NEVER explored that *I* wrote the policy nor asked why I wrote it that way. The WHOLE THING was a dog and pony show, for them to look like they were digging for something mystical "truth" and for us to look like we knew what we were doing - or at least had a reason for doing it.

(Let me be careful, here. I *DID* try to right scientifically sound policies; there were NOT just willy nilly whatever I wanted to do slopped down on paper. My point is that I COULD have done that, and no one would have cared, because it was POLICY.)

The whole idea of "Zero Tolerance" is absurd on its face, imo. Our educators give tremendous lip service to trying to teach kids to think, to open minds, to expand our students in order to better themselves. Then this is the example they set: "Blindly follow an overly broad policy that was in no way shape or form intended to cover ALL possibly circumstances." Right. Heads up to Education Establishment: Actions speak louder than words, and the cat is out of the bag.

Education is NOT about thinking; it's about conditioning. Our entire education system is built on the premise of producing FOLLOWERS, not leaders, and this example supports that assertion.

There are ways to fix this insanity:

School Choice

End Tenure

Professional Standards for Teachers of Topics (ie, Chemistry Proficiency Examinations for Chemistry Teachers, History Profiicency Examinations for History Teachers, etc), ie, do away with the "If I'm a teacher, I can teach anything" mindset.

Complete and Local control of a school district; NO federal or otherwise "out of state" input; keep the money and control local, and KEEP PARENTS INFORMED about what decisions are being made.!!

Finally, there MUST be more than JUST a policy on this, or the girl could not have been taken into custody (juveniles are NOT arrested). There must be an actual statute on the books, or the cops would have just said, "fine, so that's your policy. Have a Nice Day."

THAT is a problem the people of the state CAN fix. Laws can be changed by strong, well organized grassroots movements or by the more expensive direct lobbying.

Finally, put my down for someone who has carried a pocket knife pretty much every day for nearly forty years. I think I started in second grade or so. In my high school, the only rules we had were on blade length, and that governed what was in your pocket vs. being on your belt. It was, in hindsight, rather cool growing up in the heart of the Appalachains.

Boy, Andy, you nailed this one right on the head. Policy = "I Don't Have To Think." When I was in Law Enforcement, I wrote my share of policies. In some cases, I KNEW I was merely documenting "a way" (as opposed to a GOOD way) to do something so I would have something to point out to keep the defense attorneys off my back in court.

"Why do you do it THAT way.""That's are policy."

Hehe. The questions would stop right there. It was NEVER explored that *I* wrote the policy nor asked why I wrote it that way. The WHOLE THING was a dog and pony show, for them to look like they were digging for something mystical "truth" and for us to look like we knew what we were doing - or at least had a reason for doing it.

(Let me be careful, here. I *DID* try to right scientifically sound policies; there were NOT just willy nilly whatever I wanted to do slopped down on paper. My point is that I COULD have done that, and no one would have cared, because it was POLICY.)

The whole idea of "Zero Tolerance" is absurd on its face, imo. Our educators give tremendous lip service to trying to teach kids to think, to open minds, to expand our students in order to better themselves. Then this is the example they set: "Blindly follow an overly broad policy that was in no way shape or form intended to cover ALL possibly circumstances." Right. Heads up to Education Establishment: Actions speak louder than words, and the cat is out of the bag.

Education is NOT about thinking; it's about conditioning. Our entire education system is built on the premise of producing FOLLOWERS, not leaders, and this example supports that assertion.

There are ways to fix this insanity:

School Choice

End Tenure

Professional Standards for Teachers of Topics (ie, Chemistry Proficiency Examinations for Chemistry Teachers, History Profiicency Examinations for History Teachers, etc), ie, do away with the "If I'm a teacher, I can teach anything" mindset.

Complete and Local control of a school district; NO federal or otherwise "out of state" input; keep the money and control local, and KEEP PARENTS INFORMED about what decisions are being made.!!

Finally, there MUST be more than JUST a policy on this, or the girl could not have been taken into custody (juveniles are NOT arrested). There must be an actual statute on the books, or the cops would have just said, "fine, so that's your policy. Have a Nice Day."

THAT is a problem the people of the state CAN fix. Laws can be changed by strong, well organized grassroots movements or by the more expensive direct lobbying.

Finally, put my down for someone who has carried a pocket knife pretty much every day for nearly forty years. I think I started in second grade or so. In my high school, the only rules we had were on blade length, and that governed what was in your pocket vs. being on your belt. It was, in hindsight, rather cool growing up in the heart of the Appalachains.

I think the only rule we had high school was that if you accidently brought a bladed item (ex a pen knife) to school you could take it the main office give them you name, and say that you accidently brought this with you. They would keep in and at the end of the day you could pick up, but you were to try and not bring it again. I liked this policy so that if someone would make a mistake and did something about it, it would not be so judgement later on if something happened and it was found that someone had this but did not report it.

When I was in High School you could have guns on your gun rack in your truck and no body said a word and no body got shot. Just leave them in the truck. They were for hunting. Nowadays they'd call the SWAT team.

When I was there, they had the "smoke hole." It was a little, out-of-view space between two wings of the building, right below the principal's office, where he could keep an eye on it.

Soon after, the school board banned smoking from the premises, and basically unleashed the smokers on the neighbours. The neighbours raised a stink, and rightfully so. At some point after that, the school managed to mark off a small square in the corner of the parking lot as a smoking area. That was also later removed.

At that point, the smokers not only went back to loitering across the street, they began to congregate in the loop of street that leads to the front (and rarely used) entrance to the school. Here, they were technically on municipal property where the school had no authority, still right outside the school, and close enough to neighbours to be a nuisance.

The board was still not about to bend on their policy. So, in order to get a smoking area within school property, on the side farthest from streets or neighbours, the school leased a space in the middle of their property to the municipality, making it technically not school property. The municipality also set it up so that the school could have some control over the loop.